Boosting the prospects of young people

The latest Review of Employment
and Social Developments in Europe (20 December 2016), whilst showing
positive trends in job-creation and rising overall employment, remains haunted
by the spectre of youth unemployment, which continues to stay stubbornly high
at over 20%. Separately, the ILO’s 2016 World
Employment and Social Outlook: Trends
for Youth paper estimated that global youth unemployment was set to rise
for the first time in 3 years- from 12.9% in 2015 to 13.1%- and remain at this
level throughout 2017. In light of uncertain political conditions for the New
Year, the ability to support the aspirations of young people entering the job
market will be crucial to governments world-wide.

The barriers that young people face to gaining lasting
employment include a lack of qualifications and relevant experience, the prevalence
of temporary over permanent job contracts (especially in the growing ‘gig-economy’)
and limited access to apprenticeships and training programmes. In Europe, Youth
Guarantee schemes since 2013 have come some way towards tackling this issue,
with around 9 million young people taking up offers of employment,
apprenticeships, traineeships or further education through the initiative.
Further financial stimulus for the Youth Employment Initiative has been
proposed for 2017 to provide direct support to Member States most affected by
youth unemployment.

Ingeus strongly supports these initiatives. Our extensive
experience delivering employability and training programmes globally has taught
us the value in taking a holistic approach to grow employment. With young
people, this means providing opportunities not only to work, but also to gain
skills such as empathy, team-working, time-keeping and public speaking –
behaviours that employers tell us they value particularly highly. These skills are transferable and highly
adaptable, giving young people an edge in the long-term as they negotiate
increasingly fast-moving labour markets where a job for life is a thing of the
past.

In the UK, Ingeus
Youth Services have achieved exactly this for over 60,000 16 and 17 year-olds
through the National Citizen Service
(NCS), a government-backed programme that enables young people to get involved
in residential outdoor activities, skills-building workshops and community
projects. In order to genuinely embed empowering young people at the core of
NCS, we used customer insight, employing two 17 year-olds to develop the
programme and actively recruit NCS graduates to help deliver it. We believe
this approach has made a positive difference - 92% of young people completing
NCS say it has helped them develop useful skills for the future. One NCS
graduate who has now joined as a mentor, said:

“For young people, it’s probably the first time in their
lives that they are given the power to create change and be independent… I’ve
learned the importance of individuality, recognising that you’re in charge to
make your own decisions; and empathy, standing in another person’s shoes and
seeing their outlook on life.”

In addition to building skills, helping local communities,
and gaining a CV-boosting achievement endorsed by university application
organisations such as UCAS, our future aim is to use NCS as a springboard into
Apprenticeships and training programmes, putting young people on the firmer track
to lasting employment.